My books of the year

Last year (heh!) I set myself a Goodreads reading challenge. I wanted to read 200 books in 2013. I knew it was a lot, but that was intentional – I wanted to spend less time idly surfing, tweeting, facebooking and, you know, looking for more books on Amazon.

And I only just made it. I finished the last book on New Year’s Eve after prising the iPad out of Harry’s hot little hands. I’ve no plans to read so many books this year. This year is going to be about reading the books I’ve always intended to read, but somehow have never got round to. I’ll be blogging about that another day.

In the meantime, here are the books I loved in 2013.

Children’s/MG. I read two Pea books, two Exiles books and four Casson family books. (I’d already read the other two Kat Stephenson books). All brilliant. All highly recommended.

YA. I actually was surprised to find I didn’t read a huge amount of YA – probably because I spent so much time trying to write it and I can’t read it when I’m writing it. But I did manage to sneak in a few brilliant books…

So many amazing adult books this year. My book of the year was undoubtedly The Signature of All Things, but I love love loved so many others too.

I tend to read non-fic when I’m writing and I read some doozies this year. All different. All brilliant.

I don’t really read short stories. But one of my absolute favourite books of the year was Elizabeth Berg’s short story collection, The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted. It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me think. I LOVED it.

[PSA: Life After Life, Tiny Beautiful Things and Love, Nina are currently 99p on Kindle/Nook.]